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By Dan Gooding
Associate News Editor
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Despite its warnings over TikTok's potential national security risks and ties to the Chinese government, the U.S. still allowed the social media platform's parent company to claim nearly 1,000 temporary visas in the past year.
The highly sought H-1B visa allows high-skilled foreign workers to come to the U.S. temporarily with an employer sponsor, but the system has come under fire for its lottery-style approach and concerns that employers, particularly in Big Tech, are passing over qualified Americans for some of the highest-paying jobs in the country.
Tech companies like Amazon, Google, and Meta are among the biggest beneficiaries of the H-1B program. During Fiscal Year 2024, some 9,200 H-1Bs out of 85,000 were awarded to Amazon alone. Infosys, Cognizant Technology Solutions and Google followed behind.
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While TikTok parent ByteDance was 34th on the top 100 list of companies in 2024, just above LinkedIn, the Beijing-based conglomerate has steadily increased its import of foreign workers, rising from 163 in 2020 to 997 in 2024. The majority of those hired were from China.
"Big tech has been very reliant on [H-1B], to exploit it, really, as a source of cheap and reliable labor and they've been very active in Washington lobbying for expansion and against any kind of reform against the program, because it works to their favor," Ron Hira, a professor at Howard University who studies the H-1B program, told Newsweek.
"There's not only wage suppression, in terms of you are legally allowed to pay lower wages, but also control, because the employer applies for the visa and controls the visa, and therefore your legal status in the U.S., they have enormous amount of bargaining power and control over the workers."
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The steady rise of ByteDance's visa numbers comes at a time when TikTok faces an uncertain future in the U.S. over concerns that the Chinese Communist Party is too intertwined with ByteDance. President Biden has mandated that ByteDance divest from its U.S. operations by January 19 — one day before the next president takes over. That order is now in doubt with President-elect Trump's return to the White House.
ByteDance told Newsweek that it did not wish to comment, while a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State said that national security was its top priority when allocating visas.
The spokesperson told Newsweek that applicants are continuously screened, to make sure they are not a threat to U.S. citizens and that any concerns are shared with immigration authorities.
ByteDance not alone in using H-1B workers
While TikTok's fate in the U.S. remains in limbo ahead of the January 19 deadline, ByteDance is continuing to build out its AI research and tech development teams in the U.S. regardless. Like other big tech firms, it is turning to overseas workers over American citizens or residents.
Sophie Alcorn, an immigration attorney specializing in high-skilled visas in Silicon Valley, told Newsweek that employers often struggle to fill critical roles with workers already in the country, so they turn to candidates abroad.
"The international, talented workers are often people who are very much aligned with American values and are working hard to build the American dream, and they're very culturally aligned because they've been watching English language TV shows their whole lives and maybe paid full tuition to attend a U.S. college university for an advanced degree," she said.
Calls for H-1B reform
Hira, the Howard professor, believes that employers are gaming the lottery-style system, which received over 400,000 applications last year for just 85,000 visas, and that reform is badly needed.
"All of these things are around balance. Making sure that you're balancing a program that looks out for workers - both H-1B workers, but also U.S. workers - and balances it in a way that doesn't make the protections and restrictions so difficult that employers can't use it at all," he said.
During the first Trump administration, effort was made to reform the H-1B program and others like it – a system Hira described as "an alphabet soup" of visas – but the efforts came too late, and went nowhere once President Biden took office.
In Congress, Senators Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, and Republican Chick Grassley, from Iowa, have tried to push for legislative changes that would cut down on fraudulent use of the lottery system.
Alcorn, who works on behalf of startups, said that smaller businesses can still hire foreign workers while benefiting local communities by creating more jobs, and bringing about American innovation. The attorney believes that the next administration could create a more functional immigration system which would allow for that.
"We want the next Google, Tesla, SpaceX, to be built in the United States and AI is such an intense race right now, we want to attract those companies to come here," Alcorn said.
"So, I think that there is actually tremendous alignment from both sides of the aisle on improving high skilled immigration and making those pathways easier for people who are going to add value to our economy."
Newsweek also reached out to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) and the White House for comment.
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